Two fully sold (to the owners and developers)... Just 84 to go! Truth about the most hyped luxury flats in the world

Last week’s lavish launch party for One Hyde Park, the giant glass and concrete block of flats sandwiched between Harvey Nichols and The Serpentine, was breathlessly billed as the return of the super-rich to London’s property market.

At an asking price upwards of £6,000 per square foot, the luxury development – designed by Lord Rogers and masterminded by developer brothers Nicholas and Christian Candy – is said to be the most expensive residential property in the world.

Indeed, one of the penthouses has reportedly been sold for a gargantuan £135 million to a buyer who made a casual inquiry on the internet.

Sales pitch: Nicholas and Christian Candy with partners Holly Valance and Emily Candy at this week's launch of One Hyde Park

The party was, to put it mildly, opulent. Champagne flowed. Lunch was provided by leading chefs Heston Blumethal and Daniel Boulud, and the guest list included Bernie Ecclestone, Andrew Lloyd Webber, ‘Dragon’ James Caan and BBC sports presenter Gary Lineker. Alongside them was a rather more anonymous collection of the seriously wealthy – Eastern European oligarchs, Middle Eastern sheiks and cash-rich Chinese entrepreneurs.

Stretch limousines were on hand to ferry 350 selected VIPs the hundred yards or so to the plush Mandarin Oriental Hotel next door. Liveried guards asked for photo ID, the least you might expect for entry to a complex at which security is said to be ‘fortress-like’ and which includes iris-recognition systems in the lifts, panic rooms and bullet-proof glass.

Exclusive: Flats have views over Hyde Park and the rooms are designed by the Candy Brothers. They start at £6.5million for a one bedroom apartment

Fifteen different types of precious marble have been used in the construction and whole forests of European oak felled.

Already
described as the most desirable address on the planet, the development
would set the benchmark for global house prices for the super-rich.

Sixty
per cent of the 86 apartments have sold, say the developers, and the
rest are going fast. After all, One Hyde Park has a private cinema, a 21
metre swimming pool, saunas, a gym, a golf simulator, a wine cellar, a
valet service, concierge and room service from the Mandarin Oriental
next door.

The cheapest home on offer, a humble one-bedroom flat, is said to cost £6.75 million, with developers claiming that the majority cost between £27 million and £33 million.

Even the service charge is record-breaking. At £150 per square metre per year, the owners of the biggest units can expect to pay more than £100,000 annually.

But The Mail on Sunday can reveal that, despite last Wednesday’s lavish ‘opening’, sales of only two of the homes have been completed – and for remarkably low prices.

Land Registry documents show that a hugely desirable triplex penthouse, occupying the entire 11th, 12th and 13th floors of one of the four buildings which make up the development, was sold last August.

Luxury living: Inside one of the sumptuous multi-million-pound apartments

Big launch: 5,000 gold balloons are released from the roof of One Hyde Park

It went to Park One, a company based
in the Cayman Islands, which was almost certainly set up specifically
for this purpose. The real owner is His Excellency Sheik Hamad Bin
Jassim Bin Jaber at-Thani.

Celebrity viewers: Formula One Chief, Bernie Ecclestone, and his daughter Petra, at the launch

The
Sheik, a father of 13, is the Prime Minister and Foreign Minister of
Qatar and the second most powerful man in the gas-rich gulf kingdom
after his cousin, the Emir.

Sheik
Hamad also happens to be the financial backer of Project Grande
(Guernsey) Ltd, the company set up as a joint venture with Candy &
Candy to develop One Hyde Park.

So how much was paid for this apartment which, if you believe the hype, is one of the most valuable in the world?

According
to the Land Registry, it was bought for a comparatively paltry £40.5
million, almost £100 million less than the reported asking prices for
penthouse suites.

The second completed purchase, according to the Land Registry, is a single-storey penthouse in an adjacent building.

It was sold to Christian Candy for
£31 million – again, about £100 million less than the asking price of
similar apartments in the complex.

To be fair to the Candy brothers, many of the flats are not finished, so the purchases are not finalised.

However,
analysis of the Land Registry’s Register of Charges suggests that
legally binding contracts have been exchanged – and deposits probably
paid – on a further 26 apartments. This is well short of the 48 or so
claimed by the project’s cheerleaders.

Our
analysis of the Land Registry figures suggests that contracts were
exchanged on a mere 15 units in 2007, when the marketing drive began.

The following year, contracts were exchanged on a further eight, including Christian Candy and Sheik Hamad’s penthouses.

None at all were sold in 2009, when the banking crisis was at its height. And contracts were exchanged on a further five in 2010.

A SHEIK, AN EX-COMMUNIST AND AN IRISH TILER. BUT CAN THEY ALL STILL AFFORD TO BUY?

The sheiks and tycoons who have bought, or are said to be buying, properties at One Hyde Park include:

Vladimir Kimchairmanof copper producer KazakhmysKim was a communist who became a hugely rich capitalist. He led Kazakhstan’s mining giant Kazakhmys during the country’s communist era, and went on to work for Samsung as head of its Kazakhstan subsidiary. When the Samsung contract ended, the government transferred state-owned mining stock into Kim’s name. Last year he sold £840 million of his stake but still holds £2.3 billion.

Mohammed Saud Sultan al QasimiHead of finance for the Sharjah governmentAs well as being finance minister, al Qasimi is proprietor of Continental Foods, owner of the Dunkin’ Donuts franchise. The United Arab Emirates, to which Sharjah belongs, has been badly affected by the crash in its property market. Private investors started withdrawing funds and banks have cut lending, creating an atmosphere of panic and mistrust.

Ray Grehan, property developerA former tiler, Grehan founded the construction company Glenkerrin with his brother Danny. In 2005 he bought the former Veterinary College in Dublin for £145 million at the peak of the property boom. Ireland has since been devastated by recession and the college site is now valued at £34 million. Grehan now relies on UK developments.

Krill Pisarev and Yuri Zhukov, property developersThe pair’s PIK Group became the largest listed developer in Russia and in 2008 its portfolio was valued at £6.25 billion. Since then it has lost 98 per cent of its stock value. They could lose control of the company after Nomos bank demanded £172 million for a loan payment and penalties.

Christian Candy, property developerChristian, 36, is said to be introverted with a dry sense of humour. After studying for a business degree, he went into the City before he and Nick, 37, started their property business with a £6,000 loan.

Sheik Hamad Bin Jassim Bin Jaber Al Thani, Prime Minister and Foreign Minister, Qatar Sheik Hamad is also chairman of Qatar Holding, an investment fund set up to maximise the country’s return from oil and gas. Last May it bought Harrods for £1.5 billion.

Most of the apartments are in the names of offshore companies represented by top London law firms, as is common at this end of the market. A few, however, have names attached.

One duplex apartment has been reserved by Mohammed Saud Sultan Al Qasimi, head of finance for the government of Sharjah, one of the United Arab Emirates.

Another is under contract to London-based Vladimir Kim, a Kazakh billionaire who is chairman of the Kazakhstan copper producer Kazakhmys, and another is being bought by Ray Grehan, the founder of Irish residential developer Glenkerrin.

But such is the ferocity of the international financial downturn that it is unclear if even these provisional sales will proceed to completion.

Two other named buyers, Russians Kirill Pisarev and his partner Yuri Zhukov, are reported to have lost about 90 per cent of their wealth since their real-estate firm PIK saw its stock value crash by 98 per cent between 2007 and 2009.

A spokesman for S.J. Berwin, lawyers for Project Grande (Guernsey) Ltd, said that some buyers had yet to complete the paperwork to register their interest with the Land Registry.

‘Until those applications have been completed, they will not appear on the official copies of the titles to the development,’ he said.

‘The developer has confirmed to us that the development has now been certified as “practically complete”. Therefore, completion of the leases will follow shortly in accordance with the relevant agreement and the tenants will then be required to register the lease at Land Registry. We can confirm, on behalf of the developer, that agreements for lease have been agreed and exchanged for a total value in excess of £900 million and in respect of more than 55 per cent of the development.’

According to these figures, however, the average sale price would scarcely seem to justify the hype surrounding One Hyde Park.

‘More than 55 per cent’ suggests that agreement has been reached to sell about 48 apartments (the developers refuse to be specific).

If that is the case, the average price is about £18.75 million. Expensive, but far short of the prices widely claimed.

The Candy brothers are well known in the world of the London super-rich, and display all the trappings of jet-setting playboys.

They own homes around the world, yachts and luxury cars including Rolls-Royces, Bentleys and Ferraris.

But in the wake of the financial crisis, they have seen a number of ambitious projects falter. Last year, they were forced to hand back a site earmarked for luxury apartments in Beverly Hills, California, after their consortium defaulted on a £230 million bank loan.

Their plans for a £3 billion development of the former Chelsea Barracks in West London – a joint venture with the Qatari Investment Authority – ran into the ground after Prince Charles led protests against the modernist design.

And plans to develop the site of the old Middlesex Hospital in central London had to be halted after the 2008 collapse of Icelandic bank Kaupthing, which was financing the project.

Neither Nicholas nor Christian Candy would comment on the disparity between the developers’ claims about sales at One Hyde Park and the public records.

However, a source close to the development said that about 50 flats would be registered as completed sales within the next three weeks.

He confirmed that the most prestigious apartment had sold for £135 million and argued that the price would be closer to £200 million once it had been fitted out.

This sale, he said, would be recorded at the Land Registry within a week.

The source said that full stamp duty would be paid on all flats, giving nearly £40 million to the Exchequer.

He said that the difference between the prices paid on the two completed sales and the widely reported asking price for similar apartments can be explained because, as investors who made an early commitment to buy, the Prime Minister of Qatar and Christian Candy received discounts.